1. Field of the Invention
This invention is targeted at a home network that is already provided with an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), an optical fiber line, or other communication line that is constantly connected to the Internet. This invention relates to a consumer equipment remote operation system that enables configurations to be set automatically upon simply connecting a network camera, DVD recorder, or other network-ready consumer equipment physically to the home network and without using a computer and enables remote operation of the consumer equipment via the network from a terminal inside or outside a home, and also relates to a method for putting this system into operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Remote operation systems, with which a network-ready DVD recorder, network camera, and other consumer equipments are connected to a home network in advance and, upon setting various configurations, these consumer equipments are remotely operated from an outside location, are disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2.
In Patent Document 1, a home network is connected to an outdoor public line via a gateway. To perform remote operation of consumer equipment connected to the indoor network, the address of the consumer equipment is designated from a WWW browser on a mobile terminal, a dialup connection is made, and a PPP connection is established with the consumer equipment via the gateway. The WWW browser on the mobile terminal is then used to designate operation details, and when these are sent, the consumer equipment is operated according to the operation details received by a WWW server of the consumer equipment.
In Patent Document 2, addresses of consumer equipments are managed by a service server connected to the Internet, and when the service server receives information identifying consumer equipment and remote operation details from a mobile terminal, the server prepares remote operation instructions based on this information and sends the instructions to the designated consumer equipment.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-331394    Patent Document 2: Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2003-345686
For a user to access consumer equipments connected to a home network from a user terminal via a wide-area network and perform remote operation of the consumer equipments, the addresses of the consumer equipments must be known to the user. Because the above-described conventional arts are premised on an IP address being allocated in a fixed manner to each user, the address of each piece of consumer equipment is known to the user.
However, in recent years, it has become popular to employ dynamic addressing, with which, upon installing a home gateway inside a home, a global address is allocated to the wide area network (WAN) side interface of this home gateway, private addresses that cannot be accessed from the exterior are allocated to terminals inside the home, and the above-described global address is changed dynamically by an ISP (internet service provider). It was thus difficult for a user to access and operate home equipments from the exterior.
To enable remote operation of home equipments via a network, network configurations, such as allocation of an IP address to each home equipment, etc., must be set. However, a computer is generally necessary for configuring network-ready equipment, and because the configuring task requires advanced technical knowledge, a large burden is placed on the user.